Patriots' defense has been in a rush

The Patriots have recorded 11 sacks through two preseason games, eight in Thursday night's 37-20 romp over Philadelphia.

FOXBORO – Adam Butler says the Patriots defense is reflected in what it puts on film. If that’s the case, the Patriots have a box office hit on their hands this summer. Thursday night’s 37-20 preseason win over the Philadelphia Eagles saw the Patriots unleash an eight-sack attack on three different quarterbacks, sending Super Bowl MVP Nick Foles to the sideline with a shoulder injury in the process.

“We had our moments,” Patriots head coach Bill Belichick acknowledged. “We had some pressure from different players and so there were some good things there. We obviously allowed a lot of passing yardage (363 yards) and there were times when the rush and the coverage didn’t really marry up the way we’d like it to. Our pass rush is part pass rush and it’s part coverage.

“Overall, our team defense was good at times, but we need to have more consistency. When you give up over 350 yards passing that’s not good. Knocking the quarterback down, that’s good, but we need to marry those two together because when we didn’t have the coverage and the rush then we gave up too much yardage.”

Butler views it as a work in progress.

“We’ve still got a little ways to go,” the second-year defensive tackle said, “but we are what we put on tape.” The tape shows that through two games – they opened the

preseason with a 26-17 win over Washington – the Patriots have hit the quarterback 19 times, registering 11 sacks for 66 yards in the process.

“Time will tell,” Adrian Clayborn, the unrestricted free agent the Pats signed away from Atlanta during the offseason to help strengthen their pass rush, answered when asked how good the team’s front seven can be. “I won’t put a prediction on it, but if we keep working hard and keep doing what we’ve got to do, we will be good.”

Keionta Davis, who was signed as a rookie free-agent lineman out of Tennessee-Chattanooga in 2017 and spent the year on the nonfootball injury/reserve list, topped the list of eight players who took part in the assault on Foles, Nate Sudfeld and Joe Callahan with 1 ½ sacks.

Signed as a rookie free agent out Miami this year, end Trent Harris shares the team lead in sacks with Davis through two games, strip sacking the Redskins’ Kevin Hogan in the preseason opener and combining with Davis to get to Callahan, fittingly enough, on the Eagles’ last offensive play on Thursday night.

Tackle Lawrence Guy and end Eric Lee each chipped in with a sack against the ‘Skins.

Clayborn and fellow end Derek Rivers, Butler and fellow tackle Vincent Valentine, linebacker Kyle Van Noy and Patrick Chung (linebackers coach Brian Flores, who is serving as the team’s de facto defensive coordinator with Matt Patricia now the head coach in Detroit, sent him on a first-quarter safety blitz) all had a sack against the Eagles.

All of this has been done with end Trey Flowers, the team’s leading sacker in each of the past two seasons (seven in 2016; 6 ½ last year), having yet to set foot on the playing field.

And Deatrich Wise Jr., the second-year man who was clearly the team’s top defensive lineman at the outset of training camp, has yet to check in with a sack although he does have one quarterback hit.

“I think the most exciting part is the diversity,” said Butler. “There’s so many people that can do a lot of different things. You’ve got some guys who can rush inside and outside, some guys who are just very talented on the edge, and to watch everybody come out and show their skills (Thursday night) is amazing.”

Granted, the circumstances were about as diametrically opposed as possible, but after failing to record a single sack in 44 passing attempts in their 41-33 loss to the Eagles in Super Bowl LII, the Patriots got to Foles three times (while he threw nine times), Sudfeld on four occasions (he threw 39 times) and Callahan once (he threw three passes) in Thursday’s night’s preseason game.

The Patriots’ 42 sacks in 2017 tied for seventh in the NFL but they didn’t get after it like this. Harris’ strip sack of Hogan led to end Geneo Grissom’s scoop and 53-yard scamper to the Washington 1, setting the stage for the touchdown and 2-point conversion by running back Ralph Webb that gave the Patriots a 26-17 fourth-quarter lead.

Clayborn’s strip sack of Foles led to a 54-yard scoop and score by linebacker Ja’Whaun Bentley, the fifthround draft pick who has excelled in the preseason, pushing the Patriots’ secondquarter lead over the Eagles to 17-0 and sending the QB to the medical tent with a shoulder injury.

“Part of my job as a defensive lineman is to get after the quarterback,” said Clayborn, who registered 9 ½ sacks with the Falcons last year, “and they were passing a lot (Thursday night), so we had to get after the quarterback so we don’t leave our DBs (defensive backs) out to dry.”